PVS, BRT, and Land Navigation 9/12/2009

The initial plan for the weekend was to complete our Personal Vertical Skills (PVS) and Basic Rope Technician (BRT) check-offs on Saturday and complete a land navigation exercise on Sunday. We thought that we were going to have additional SAR members from other teams coming to the check-off so we rigged a boat-load of ropes. When those folks didn’t arrive, we were able to check-off our team in only a few hours. This allowed us to complete both the land navigation exercise and BRT check-off in a single day and late night. We did have one little diversion when some passing mountain bikers told us that they passed a child’s bicycle on the trail near a drop-off without any nearby children. We called it in to the local PD and told them that we would investigate. Three team members made their way down the trail to check things out and found a family on a bike ride. The family said that one of their kids had left his bike by the trail, and they had recently gone back to get it. All was OK, so we canceled with the PD.

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The map below is our land navigation exercise. The red track (~ 6 miles) is the route that Mark Kinsey and I took when we set the course. The other icons were locations of the 5 teams during the exercise. We set up a command post and used the time to work on radio use, map and compass, and GPS technique. At each control, the team must call in to get a set of coordinates for their next location. At that time, they are told whether they are to use a GPS or compass to get to the next location. It looks like Team #4 had some navigation issues.